Friday, 6 April 2012

. . . has appeared in Alberta. It got some attention in the comments here by Jane, Anonymous, and Niles.

But the Alberta Tea BaggersWildrose Alliance deserves more scrutiny for this brain-fart.

“The legalities of abortion fall under federal jurisdiction. We respect that Albertans view social issues differently, which is why Wildrose would immediately introduce legislation allowing citizens to put issues like abortion of citizen initiated referendum. “

Still doubtful, I called and asked a Wildrose spokesman myself about the matter this evening.

Bill Bewick, the party’s spokesman on health policy, told me that a Wildrose government could not ban abortion, since that’s a matter of federal responsibility. However, he said, the province could opt to delist abortion, so that the service would no longer be covered by the province’s health insurance plan.

“We have no plans to address this issue. We will not legislate on it,” Bewick told me.

On the other hand, he told me, the party does favour citizen-sponsored referenda on a wide range of issues.

“People are free to initiate referenda on any issue they want,” he said.

But when I asked Bewick if the Wildrose campaign would commit not to delist abortion, he declined to do so.

6 comments:

Unfortunately, those are the choices we have been given for voting day. That we will end up with a PC or Wildrose government is a no-brainer of course. The Left is simply too fractured (and in the case of the two ridings here) irrelevant to have any realistic shot at government. I'm not sure it is entirely fair to blame this all on average Albertans.

Actually, with the left-centre vote splintering into the Liberal and Alberta Party, it seems the Libs have done this to themselves. The PC's and Wildrose have apparently gone from bashing the federal Liberals to bashing each other instead.